


sweet

by alienchainsaw



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Beings, Graphic Depictions of Flowers, M/M, ah yes magical gore for when you're too squeamish to write the real thing, i tried so hard to stay out of cannibalism territory but this is eichi we're talking about, not hanahaki, this is the worst im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8921413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienchainsaw/pseuds/alienchainsaw
Summary: “I’m just curious. This is meant to be an educational experience, isn’t it? I want to learn everything about you. About your kind.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for… body horror/gore/knives and stuff/cannibalism/vomiting/etc as well as weird power dynamics that i do not approve of  
> im pretty sure i was thinking of the bartimaeus trilogy when i started writing this but whatever theres no worldbuilding here i put 0 thought into this i just didnt want anybody to die lmao  
> also blame ooc on the AU  
> enjoy and i hope you feel as uncomfortable reading this as i did writing it

“Will it hurt?”

“Does it matter if it hurts? Regardless of how I feel, I must obey your commands and allow you to do whatever you like, no?” Wataru spreads his hands, gesturing pointedly to his rather helpless-looking position lying on the floor of Eichi’s sunlit ensuite bathroom. There’s a familiar look in Eichi’s eyes as he peers down at him, one that means he wants to meddle with a perfectly good performance.

“I’m just curious. This is meant to be an educational experience, isn’t it? I want to learn _everything_ about you. About your kind.”

It’s absolutely not meant to be educational! Like all Wataru’s other shows, it is meant to entertain, to bring about joy and love. Well, he’d been the one to think up that little excuse, so it’s fair enough.

Wataru _hmm_ s. “Shouldn't you be taking notes, then, Eichi?”

“No. I want this to be special. You’re special.” He sounds so sincere, so excited. He reaches out to touch Wataru's bare shoulder. His hand is very cold. With his other hand he retrieves a scalpel.

“Oh dear. Surely you know that won't work on me…?”

Eichi leans over him, gaze intent, rosy-cheeked.  “It will work, won’t it. Just - temporarily. I want to see it happen for myself. Where should I...”

“My body is your canvas to play with, my dear master! It makes no difference where you choose! Observe - “ He plucks the knife from Eichi’s hand and slashes it across his own ribcage with a flourish. Purple-blue blood spurts out for a moment before the droplets twist in midair and are sucked back into his body. The cut melts away easily.

“Give that to me.” Eichi takes Wataru's hand in both of his own, prising his fingers apart and taking back the knife.

“Ah, was I too eager? Would you prefer me to be a little nervous, perhaps… or I could make some, mm, _noise_ …”

“No, I just want to be the one doing it. Stay still.”

Eichi splays his hand against Wataru's left ribs and makes a careful cut over his sternum. Lets it heal, then makes a deeper one. And again. Wataru feels the scrape of the blade against bone all the way to his teeth.

“Are you in control of this healing? Are you doing it consciously?”

Of course he is. “I can stop it if you'd like! Just say the word and the wounds you inflict shall be as permanent as the sweet darkness of death itself...”

“Yes, please.” Eichi switches to a rather larger and more intimidating knife, one with precise measurements marking the blade like a ruler. It flashes as he angles it downwards.

Slowly, he carves Wataru open from the dip in his collarbones to the top of his navel. And this time, it doesn't heal. The pain can only be described as Amazing _._ He does his best to keep his breathing steady and his muscles relaxed. Time for a little misdirection. He flashes one of his best smiles.

 _“_ I can do more than this, you know…! You don't even need to use that knife.”

Eichi looks up at him. “Well then, what shall I use?”

“Eichi, your hands are very cold. Wouldn't you like to warm them up…? Fufufu. Try it.”

Eichi glances between his own hands, the knife, Wataru’s body, the dark blood seeping out of his chest and oozing in rivulets down onto the ceramic tiles. He looks at his hands again. Wataru mirrors Eichi’s gesture from earlier, sliding the knife out of his fingers and making it disappear with a flick. Then he slowly guides the hand onto the other side of his chest.

After a moment of silence Eichi starts moving again. He swipes some of the blood with a thumb, spreading it out. “Does it taste like human blood, I wonder,” he says, maybe for his own benefit, before bending his head and licking at the top of the wound. Even his tongue is cooler than Wataru's skin.

“It doesn't taste like blood at all,” Eichi mutters, before wetly running his mouth all the way down the length of the cut. This feels a lot better than it should, and a lot more painful. This is derailing more than he had really dared to expect.

“Goodness me, Eichi,” he says, instinctively going for the distraction angle again, “this is lesson time, not lunchtime,” and then abruptly Eichi is back on track. He digs his fingers deep into the cut, gripping the edges of the skin like handles. His fingernails bite into Wataru like claws, pain spiking sharply. Wataru holds his breath, looking through his lashes at Eichi, watching him bite his lip as he ever so carefully twists his hands inside Wataru and slowly wrenches his torso open.

The magic that heals him is only an extension of the one that keeps him in human form, instead of something more... abstract. Without it his flesh parts fast, too fast, like gooey toasted marshmallow, no resistance at all. He’s going numb now, feels only a cold brushing sensation as it happens. Exhaling is difficult, he’s too shaky to stop himself from taking a short sharp pant of breath before he swallows and restrains himself again. He doesn't even _need_ to breathe unless he wants to talk but it comes with this shredded human-shape costume and it’s giving him away now.

Eichi sinks his hands into the spongy mass of purple roses growing where Wataru’s stomach should be and blue blood wells up around his fingers, staining him to the wrist. He stops for a moment to suck on his bloody fingers before continuing. Waiting and watching while half-open on the ground like this is so hard, but Wataru doesn't really know when his cue is, right now.

Eichi separates a wet bloom from the rest and pulls it out by its long roots, the stem sliding out of Wataru’s flesh with difficulty. If the slow uprooting makes a noise in the silence then Wataru doesn't hear it.

He twists the flower in his hand, looking at it a little, before crushing it between his fingers. More blood drips out of his fist, onto his thigh, forgotten as he opens his hand again and the flower disintegrates. He pushes his fingers sideways under the skin higher up on Wataru's chest, the right side, and flips it away to reveal more of the ribcage. The foamy purple flowers that fill up his thoracic cavity start to bloom and swell in response to the cold air, puffing up in between each rib like bread rising.

Eichi swipes their tops away and stops to reposition himself - now kneeling over him properly, one hand braced against the tiles as he brings out the bonesaw - the _bonesaw?_ \- he’s moving it back and forth in the air like he’s not sure where to start, yes, Eichi has a bonesaw. Wataru would guess that Eichi has never held a tool in his life before today and now here he is, with a saw, ready to hack Wataru open like a log of wood. Maybe the pain is fogging his mind because he looks Eichi straight in the eye and smacks it out of his hand.

“ _Don't_ be a stranger, Eichi,” he says before he can stop himself. “You’re doing this with your bare hands or not at all. I want you to _touch me_ .” He hopes he doesn't sound _too_ sincere. Maybe he is being sincere, he can't tell anymore.

Either way he gets a good reaction, which is Eichi recoiling in shock, looking affronted - looking very excited - leaning forward and grinning at him, blue eyes glinting.

“You want me to what now? I thought you said that regardless of how you felt, you’d have to let me do what I liked to you.”

“And - what _would_ you like to do to me…?” Oops. Eichi hates losing.

He frowns a little. “Of course I’m happy to do the things you ask me to. I was only joking, you know.”

He sits back, fitting himself into the gap between Wataru's thighs, and grabs him by the back of the neck to pull him upright. Eichi’s arms are as weak as the rest of his body but luckily Wataru remembers that he, too, has arms, still complete and working for now, and he props himself up somehow until he falls forward into Eichi’s embrace.

A few mangled flowers tumble out of his abdomen along with a fresh wash of blood. Eichi doesn't seem to notice, hugging their bodies close, hands wet against his spine. Wataru hurriedly focuses his magic there before Eichi’s grip can sink through his skin like toffee. Eichi lets him fall back a little and touches their foreheads together, gently.

“So.” His breath is warm at least. “Where exactly do you want me to touch you?” That smile is back.

“Wherever you please - human-style bodies have plenty on offer, you know, they've got brains, eyes, bones, hearts..."

Eichi blinks. “I was thinking save the heart for dessert, honestly. Since I have such a delicious main course to work my way through first.” His hands scrape down Wataru's shoulderblades, down past his waist. Pull him closer still.

“Well, well, what an honour this is...! I’m glad you want to do it properly. Although your table manners have been terrible so far. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?”

“Oh, plenty of times, when I was younger especially. I used to throw my food against the wall when I was in hospital rather than eat it.”

He drops his chin to Wataru's shoulder and presses a soft absent kiss to the left side of his neck. His hands move again, one supporting Wataru's upper back, the other - the other ripping open Wataru’s stomach to make space for his arm before he shoves his entire hand _up_ _inside_ Wataru's ribcage - Wataru is so, so glad that Eichi can't see his face right now -

“When I was younger… You know, I’ve been cut open like this before.” There’s a dull clustered noise as he grasps a clump of tiny blooms somewhere in the chest and rips them loose. “I had an operation on my lungs. At the time I was too young to really care about what happened to me, but when I remembered the event afterwards I would always get nightmares. Isn’t that strange?”

“Humans in general are strange, are they not?” Wataru can feel soft fingers squeezing against his left lung as he breathes.

“In the nightmares, the surgeons would cut me open,” Eichi murmurs dreamily, “and they'd try to fix me, but of course I’m impossible to fix. So they’d keep trying, slicing me up smaller and smaller. And then I’d bleed out before they could put me back together again.”

“Ah, what a tragedy that would be, what a wonder lost from the world... Don't trouble yourself with such sad stories, Eichi. I shall do my best to transmute all your nightmares into the sweetest of fantasies.”

Eichi angles his elbow inward and feels around blindly, only stopping when he overreaches and Wataru feels cold blood leaking from a new puncture above his collarbone. It’s strange being poked open from the inside for once. “Wataru, why do you have lungs and a windpipe, but no other organs?”

“Hmm… Why do I have a face? So I can smile. And why do I have vocal chords? So I can sing…” He gestures, instinctively, but he’s too weak to raise his arms now, so his fingers twitch unseen at his sides.

“It’s so good feeling you breathe, like this.” Eichi’s voice is nearly a whisper. “Say something more for me. My Wataru.”

Wataru takes the deepest, smoothest breath the circumstances will allow - using magic, since his diaphragm has a hole in it now - and does as he’s told.

“Amazing! ...That something as everyday as forcing the air out of my lungs might be enough to please you… Well, there is beauty in simplicity! Although minimalism isn’t really to my taste.” He can't see but he imagines his whole body animating with each breath, chest heaving, shoulders rising and falling, petals spilling out between his ribs. A lovely sight. “So, what should I be talking abo -- “

His sentence ends in a wet hacking gurgle and a jolt of fear as Eichi reaches up and crushes his windpipe closed between thumb and forefinger, mangles it, and for the first time Wataru feels real excitement. For the first time he realises that he's _really_ _not_ the one in control here.

“Now I see why you have that,” Eichi says mildly as he lets go.

Wataru coughs up a fleck of blood with what’s left of his last breath and watches distantly as it hits the tiles and starts to distort, grow, crystallise. The pool of blood they’re sitting in starts to crackle as it congeals from dark blue into candy-red ice. The mirrors in this bathroom start to rattle, just quietly, his power straining to manifest itself in any way it can, because right now with his voice gone he’s as powerless as he’s ever been.

Oblivious - or just ignoring it - Eichi has been distracted by the wound he made earlier, the small one. He sucks on it, slowly, tongue hot - when had Wataru gotten this cold? He continues, a line of kisses up to Wataru’s useless throat, pressing softly against his jaw.

“Your voice was always the best part of you,” he says dreamily. Then he turns his head, delicately fits his teeth around Wataru's Adam’s apple, and bites down.

This time it’s different. His teeth don't pierce through with the same gentle ease his fingers had earlier. He growls with irritation and Wataru feels him bite harder and harder, until finally his teeth rupture the cartilage and meet with a click inside Wataru’s neck. He wrenches his head to the side and tears out his larynx, fully destroying his vocal cords.

He feels magic buzzing and rushing to the wound and to the lump of flesh in between Eichi's lips, new shoots and leaves sprouting from both, body reverting to bloody soil. But Eichi chews and swallows his mouthful anyway, Wataru can hear him do it. It sounds messy.

Had he expected it to be messy? How much of this is he doing in the heat of the moment? How much had he planned when they started this - how much had he been fantasising about for _weeks_ while he made small talk with Wataru and fed him tea and biscuits?

Imitation isn't the greatest form of flattery after all, Wataru thinks dizzily, and ignoring his best judgement he gathers his magic up inside his fingertips and lets the rest of his body go soft as toffee so that Eichi can partake.

He scoops out a chunk of Wataru’s shoulder with bared teeth, stops to smear the blood from his mouth with a bloodier hand, then takes the exposed collarbone in his fingers and breaks it like chalk. He tastes a shard of bone.

“You’re so _sweet_ to let me do this, Wataru,” he says happily, before bending his head down again.

 

\--

 

Until apparently he’s had enough; then he flings Wataru’s body back onto the cold tiles with a thud, licks his lips, and wipes his mouth again. The gold afternoon light has properly gone from the frosted-glass windows, by this point.

“For someone who talks about love so much, Wataru, your heart is _very difficult_ to find.”

Wataru beams at him silently. _Next time, maybe think to ask for help before you shut me up for good, hm?_

“I wasn't going to eat it anyway. The world doesn't deserve to carry my burden for eternity, does it?” Ah yes, that famous story. Or was it a famous saying by this point - you are what you eat. Consume a demon’s heart and become one yourself.

“‘Amaterasu’… You would contribute so much more happiness to this world - you already have. I would never destroy that. I just wanted to see it. The core of you.” His reverence of earlier has been replaced with real bitterness. “I’ll dismiss you now, let you recover.”

Before he can speak the word of release Wataru holds a hand up to stop him and then lets his magic flood up and out in a burst, snapping back like an elastic band as it vaporises the blood around him and yanks it back into his body. Bones and flesh crack into place. He glows molten-hot. Rising to his feet is easy now but there’s more left.

He looks down. Eichi is still sitting before him. Magic will let him hear Wataru's voice, now. He fills his words with power and resonance.

_You never heard the line about the heart having to be given willingly?_

“I did, I just -- ”

 _I wear my heart right on my sleeve, Eichi. It’s the best hiding place._ Wataru sends him a fully formed thought, a body that flowers with love like a heart, a body that pumps magic like blood…! His eyes widen.

“You… your whole body. Your whole self. So that means I… _Oh_...”

 _Now then! I’m ever so sorry about this - but_ _you don't want any stray bits of me contaminating things, do you, so…_

Wataru reaches with a glowing hand toward his neck - he recoils but all Wataru does is make a little beckoning motion. With that Eichi retches and doubles over. Dancing lights illuminate him from the inside, the last of Wataru's magic swarming up his throat. He gives a hacking cough and red blood drips from the corner of his mouth onto the marble tiles. Another cough, and he spits up a gout of blue blood, blood that flashes white, becoming purified magic as it leaves him.

Eichi gasps for breath and clutches at his stomach. Wataru crouches to steady him and rub his shoulder as he throws up wholly, clots of muscle and skin and stomach acid sliding out of his throat to land on the floor. He looks at the mess and makes a weak noise as it too dissolves into clean magic.

“All done now?” Wataru asks, relishing his newly repaired throat.

“Ahh… No _fair_ , Wataru…” Eichi’s voice trembles unevenly despite his soft tone. He leans into Wataru, turns his head with a yank on his hair, so their eyes meet. “You can't take revenge for something you signed up for.”

“Revenge? Why, this was simply a parting trick to put the sparkle back in your eye…!” He smiles and wipes some of the blood from the side of Eichi's mouth with a finger. “I can see a beautiful gaze of hatred right now, can't I? What a privilege, to discover the full range of human emotion! Treasure that and hold onto it tightly until next we meet, yes?”

“I’m too weak to hold onto anything right now, thank you. Perhaps I’ll forget your true name in my confusion as well, and then there will be no next time.”

Wataru raises his eyebrows. Eichi hisses in irritation and pushes him away. “ _Wataru Hibiki, shut up_ ,” he says, a proper command using his true name, impossible to disobey, maybe meant to remind him who’s in charge here. It’s a little comical.

He sits in obedient silence and watches as Eichi goes to stand, hesitates, glances at him with a scowl. He’s not willing to show that he can't stand up, probably, because after a few seconds he finally gives in and speaks the words of dismissal, and Wataru is free to evaporate off into the realm of magic. The show is over, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> https://twitter.com/watarusays/status/797854483502006273


End file.
